Amaro
He put his arms around me, and I collapsed against his chest. Once again there came a bitterness in his voice. “We have ruined you,” he said, “and I’ve only myself to blame. I am so very, very sorry, Luna.”
We stayed for a long time curled together, me snuffling against his chest, him holding me.
At long last, I calmed down and very nearly fell asleep, exhausted by all the emotion that had taken me over. He no longer appeared to me to be the tall, thin, bitter one of The Four, but a whole person. In spite of the unhappy past, in spite of the fact this man had gone from being a customer to a captor, rapist, and exploiter, I sensed in his embrace something genuine and deeply regretful for the crimes he’d committed against me.
“Your name,” I said to him at last.
“What about it?” he asked.
“It is Amaro, is it not?”
“Yes,” he replied, puzzled.
“I’ve pretended to myself not to know it these long years. I’ve lumped you and your friends together. I can’t do it anymore. Thank you, Amaro.”
He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Forgive me, Luna,” he said. “I have always loved you. I loved you from the moment I first was told the story of your light. I knew then I would never rest until I could be near you. But would you have come with me of your own volition? I feared not. Now, if you must leave, I won’t prevent you from going.” It was his turn to sob. I remembered the very first night with him and reminded him he’d cried then, too.
“Because I knew I’d never be able to possess you. Not the way I wanted to.”
Days passed, or weeks, or perhaps months. One day, at Amaro’s request, in fact, his insistence, the other three agreed I would be kept captive no more, and would be free if I wished to go.
But where could I possibly have gone? The only other place I’d ever been held the memory of Fishbreath’s deception, and, there in the village, the place of my captivity, I’d come to know the deepest and fullest feelings I’d ever had.
I would be content, I told them, to continue serving them as long as I would be my own master, both of my time and of my purse. We agreed on a fair price for my services and a fair settlement for my years of servitude. I was free to set my own schedule—though I had no interest in deviating from the one that was not so much second, as first nature to me. Free to set my own rates, I was free, too, to spend my time with whomever I wished.
I continued to repose in my tree at night, but I took some time off from entertaining. I needed time to digest the realities of love in the Mereling realm. Where motives could be mixed and feelings complex. The friends were true to their word and made no attempt to coerce me. They took turns bringing me meals, and they began to take more responsibility for caring for themselves, too, so if I chose to, I could spend entire days alternating between my cave bed and my oak perch. And I did choose, for some time, to live in this manner.
I dreamed a great deal. Do you dream, Ancient One? Perhaps your entire life is a dream, whether your own or mine. These, by the way, were the kinds of questions my boy lover and I had discussed.
I dreamed fitful dreams at first. Dreams I did not remember, but would wake from in a start, my heart pounding. Gradually, I began to remember bits and pieces. My abduction. The loss of agency. In my dreams, I attacked. I sat in my tree and threw great boulders down upon the heads of the men who’d taken me from my first Earth home. In the beginning, they fought back. But each night brought a new variation. Initially, I got angrier, more destructive. I wounded each of them, and each responded very much in character. Amaro would weep bitterly, accusing himself. He even, in one dream, took the boulders from my hands and pounded himself and his friends with them. Then came the day—for it was day when I dreamt, night when I kept watch on the owls and stars—when I dreamt I dashed them all to pieces, and I knew, finally, they were dead and I had prevailed. I awoke with great sadness clinging to me.
Amaro brought my evening meal and could see immediately something troubled me greatly. “What is it?” he asked.
I looked at him. “I dreamt I killed you,” I said, “and all that was left for me was sorrow.”
He put the food tray down and turned, a defeated slump in his shoulders, to go back out of the room.
I bade him stop. “There is no joy in sorrow,” I said. “There is no joy in killing. I know now there is no true release in revenge.”
He turned back to me. “With all my heart,” he said, “I wish I could change what we did.”
I understood something in that instant about Merelings and how they were fundamentally different from Immortals. Immortals never apologize. They never regret. And, consequently, they never change, and they never learn. A great flood of compassion washed over me, and I realized with a start Immortals did not feel compassion. I really was becoming a Mereling, or if not a full Mereling, at least something in between my former self and the fully penitent and emotional man who stood before me.
“Tonight,” I said to him, “I would like you to come to me in my tree. Tonight, I am ready to forgive you.”
The same night I learned yet another layer of love in the world of Merelings. There was hesitancy in his touch, for he feared reminding me of the brutal way I’d been treated when he’d been so much younger. For the first time in my life, I understood it was not always a physical union which expressed passion, but sometimes a deliberate separateness. We lay side by side, and though my body blazed with desire for him, he needed space most of all. A chance to grow into his new self. After many minutes, I moved to face him. His cock stirred, swelled, grew hard against me.
“Luna,” he said. “Luna.”
I gathered him into my arms. I pulled him into my body.
I came to love him. Not for what he’d done to me, but for his vulnerabilities. The power of his conscience. The inevitability of his demise. In fact, in time I came to love all of them. I fell in love with them, one by one. And they claimed my soul, one by one. How, you ask? And how is it I tell you my story now, soul intact? Stay another hour, smoke another pipe. I’ll finish the tale and then you can be off to tell it to others by the time my brother takes up the reins of his chariot to announce a new day.
For a time, Amaro became my constant lover. Each night, he’d climb up with me and spend the nighttime hours in my embrace. But one night, he fell sick, and consequently could not attend me. I waited all night, and in the morning, I went to see him. Alas, I could tell he’d fallen gravely ill, seized by a sudden fever. He called my name over and over, and I sat by his side, holding his hand, putting cool cloths to his brow. As afternoon arrived, he was fading fast into utter delirium. By the time my brother, who had watched throughout the late afternoon through the western window, commenced slipping below the horizon and it was time for me to climb my tree and shine, Amaro had crossed into the afterlife. His death devastated me, left me bereft, and for the third time, I pulled cloud cover to me so I could have at least a bit of privacy in my grief. You have heard the expression, Ancient One, “a piece of me died with him”? It was literally true in this case. When they laid Amaro in his casket, a piece of me leapt in to be buried with him.